Investigative teams across the media industry are steadily shrinking. Newsrooms squeezed by breaking-news competition and daily workloads are finding it harder to justify reporting that requires time, staffing and money. Major newspapers once known for investigations have shut related departments, and large broadcasters in recent years have cut investigative units to about half their previous size. With daily assignments piling up, long-form investigations are increasingly pushed aside, and it is difficult to sustain deep reporting amid a constant stream of briefs and spot news.
Even so, some outlets are trying new approaches. The Dong-A Ilbo’s “Hero Squad” and the Hankook Ilbo’s “Excellence Lab” share pitching authority with beat reporters and, once an idea is approved, assign the reporter to a dedicated team for months to work with digital staff. The model is designed to give dormant ideas a path to publication. In an environment where straight news can look similar across outlets, these efforts reflect a belief that differentiation comes from deeper planning — and that reader response and newsroom support follow.
Aju Business Daily formed its investigative team, “Balpum,” in the same spirit. Its first project, in March, examined false rental listings for monthly leases and jeonse-style deposits. A reporter went into the field posing as a young job seeker looking for a room with a 1 million won deposit. After visiting 30 real estate offices in Seoul, the reality did not match what appeared on property apps. The listings shown online were not the rooms presented in person, and terms shifted on site. The gap between the app screen and the field was larger than expected — and young renters were caught in that gap. Some details simply could not be captured through documents or statistics.
Inside a car with the windows closed, amid the sharp smell of e-cigarette smoke, the words of an assistant broker — and the order and attitude in which rooms were shown — carried context that paperwork does not reveal. When the assistant said, “It’s the same anywhere you go,” it conveyed a pressure familiar to anyone who has searched for housing. The push to rush a contract, the tone that shut down questions, and the weight of resignation felt in the moment were not the kind of things that can be expressed in a data table. Under the pressure of daily pitching, it would have been difficult to stay long enough to see what only the field makes visible.
The time when a reporter can realistically stand in the place of a young person searching for a monthly rental with a 1 million won deposit is shorter than it seems, and it does not come back once it passes. This reporting underscored that when investigative work meets a particular moment, what can be gathered on the ground changes. Some things are visible only from where you stand now, and some words can be heard only in this period. That realization reinforced the case for continuing investigative reporting.
The space for investigations continues to narrow under cost and efficiency pressures. A carefully planned project can still come up empty, and high readership is not guaranteed for the time invested. But some truths do not surface in a single story; they emerge after sustained reporting, when scattered facts connect into a structure. Even if it appears to be fading with the times, there are still stories that can bring buried realities to light.
Investigative reporting keeps making one point clearer: some things can be seen only by going in person, and some vantage points exist only in a particular time. Even as the world changes quickly, the language of the field is heard only by those who show up. Recording what is hidden from view, from where it can be seen now, is work worth continuing.
* This article has been translated by AI.
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